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As usual, I am using the last Friday of the year to do a recap of all the book reviews I wrote in the past twelve months.

In January I reviewed Henry Vogel’s pulp sci-fi adventure Trouble in Twi-Town. Then, for Vintage Science-Fiction Month, I enjoyed the oldest sci-fi book on record, A True Story by Lucian of Samosata, followed by Phillip McCollum’s A Nuclear Family. Then I reviewed a rare genre for me: biography, namely David C. Smith’s book on Robert E. Howard. I also celebrated Second Halloween with a review of C.S. Boyack’s The Midnight Rambler.

For February I reviewed Hank Bruce’s magical realism environmental novel A Prayer for My Mountain. Next up was another unusual one for me: a Wonder Woman comic. I followed that up with Sorcerers Lost by Zachary Shatzer (remember that name) and the epic alternate future-history unreliable narrator work of utter genius, Fitzpatrick’s War by Theodore Judson.

March began with the raunchy adventure story Romance Raiders of the Lost Continent, followed by a St. Patrick’s Day tale with Adam Bertocci’s Kiss Me, I’m Iris. Then I reviewed the classic mystery novel Dead Cert by Dick Francis. Finally, I completed Peter Martuneac’s Ethan Chase trilogy with Gold of the Jaguar.

April started off with The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum, then moved on to The Beach Wizard’s Big Mistake, another Shatzer tale. Up next was Fractured Oak, by Dannie Boyd, and I wrapped up the month with another Bertocci story, Wordsworth, Wilde and Wizards.

I began May with Queen’s Shadow for Star Wars day, and then Three for a Girl by Kevin Brennan. After that, Andrew Crowther’s sci-fi novel Down to Earth and yet another Bertocci tale, I’ll Never Forget You.

June started with my review of the little-known ghost story Grayling, or, Murder Will Out and Richard Harding Davis’ Soldiers of Fortune. Then, being in a Napoleonic mood, I reviewed Courage, Marshal Ney. Then–what else?–Shatzer’s Grab Bag followed by Kingsley Amis’s entertaining bit of literary criticism on the James Bond books.

July began with an entry from a genre near and dear to me: B.R. Keid’s military sci-fi Intrusion Protocol, After that, I reviewed the thriller Agent Zero and a Kevin Brennan classic, Yesterday Road. Then I polished off the month with another Shatzer tale, Molly McKeever and the Case of the Missing Clown.

For August, I reviewed the weird western The Widow’s Son by Ryan Williamson and The Fifth Student by Geoffrey Cooper. Next up was Christopher St. John’s delightful fantasy War Bunny and the sci-fi adventure The Matrioshka Divide by Isaac Young.

September began with The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey. Then it became technothriller month, beginning with Sheldon Pacotti’s disturbing and prophetic Demiurge. Then a more traditional technothriller followed, with Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I capped off this techno-trilogy with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. And then, to finish the month, another Shatzer book: The Cowboy Sorcerer.

October was of course Halloween month, and therefore I reviewed the cozy mystery Halloween Hayride Murder, the football history (but secretly Halloween-related) Paul Brown’s Ghost, the collection of cryptid tales Phantom Menagerie by Megan Engelhardt, and finally Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, which came recommended by Richard Pastore, and did not disappoint.

November began with a review of Bill Watterson’s long-awaited return, The Mysteries, followed by Kristin McTiernan’s time-travel Fissure of Worlds. Yeah, I only reviewed two books that month. November is rough for me; I’m always a little down after Halloween.

For December, I reviewed a romance novella by Napoleon Bonaparte (!), Brina Williamson’s Merona Grant and the Lost Tomb of Golgotha, and of course, to finish things out, another book by the prolific Shatzer, The Hero and the Tyrant.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and I look forward to discovering what wonderful books 2024 has in store for us!

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I’ve written about this film before, but I fear my review of three years ago fell short of its intended purpose. A friend of mine, a fellow writer whose opinion I greatly respect, watched it on my recommendation, and she hated it.

It could be due to an age difference, I suppose. Christmas Crush has what I think of as a millennial sensibility. Joke-y, banter-y, with lots of cultural references in the dialogue. It’s a bit like Adam Bertocci’s writing, and as I’ve mentioned before, Bertocci’s fiction is what I consider quintessentially millennial.

And let’s face it: we millennials are a polarizing bunch. Our culture is one people either love or hate. So it is with Christmas Crush. It is not by any means a complicated story. The plot is simple: a woman named Addie has a crush on her next-door neighbor, Sam. She makes a wish that her next-door neighbor will fall in love with her.

Unfortunately, her careless wording results in the wish being misapplied, and her other next-door neighbor, a man named Pete who is engaged to be married shortly after Christmas, falls in love with her. What follows is a series of humorous episodes as Addie tries to undo her wish and make the lovestruck Pete go back to his fiancée, Gina. All the while, trying not to give Sam the impression she’s two-timing him.

Such is the basic synopsis. Nothing earth-shattering, I’m sure you’ll agree. But as Chuck Litka reminds us, why does every story need to have high-stakes? Isn’t the future happiness of the characters reason enough to care about them?

So why do I like the film so much? Well, let us count the reasons:

#1: I’m Sick Of The Grimdark

“Grimdark!” Isn’t that a wonderful word? It comes to us from the world of Warhammer 40K, a science-fiction universe where life is nasty, brutish, and short. But there are countless films, books, TV series, etc. that feature the grimdark aesthetic. It’s got to where it’s seeping into everything. They made a horror spin-off of Winnie the Pooh, for crying out loud.

Now, I don’t mind a bit of darkness in my stories. I regularly re-read H.P. Lovecraft, you know. But recall the Duke of Dunstable’s speech from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience:

Duke. Tell me, Major, are you fond of toffee?

Major. Very!

Duke. Yes, and toffee in moderation is a capital thing. But to live on toffee – toffee for breakfast, toffee for dinner, toffee for tea – to have it supposed that you care for nothing but toffee, and that you would consider yourself insulted if anything but toffee were offered to you – how would you like that?

For “toffee,” read “grimdark.” At some point, the consensus in the entertainment industry became that nothing wholly pleasant can be allowed to exist. Or if it does exist, it should be mocked. And that is why everything became saturated with gloom and serial killers.

Christmas Crush, like any good Christmas movie, is not grim. Even when Addie’s spirits are at their lowest, the mood is still one of holiday cheer. Also, Hollywood, if you’re reading this: it’s in color!

#2: Sincerity 

Now, I have to be careful with this one, because even Christmas Crush has its share of ironic humor. That banter I referred to above can’t exist without a certain style of comedy that relies on a developed sense of irony. To a degree, this goes hand-in-hand with that millennial sensibility I alluded to earlier, and is again something Christmas Crush shares with the works of Bertocci. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Zachary Shatzer is the millennial P.G. Wodehouse, and Bertocci is the millennial Oscar Wilde.)

But the conclusion of Christmas Crush is sincere, as all Christmas movies are.

I’ve got a theory that most people who watch these Christmas movies with a mocking eye secretly hope to be charmed. We actually want to see a nice, sweet story that is pleasant and predictable. But, our culture does not exactly reward wholesome content, so we mask our desire with a veneer of irony. And of course, a lot of the movies are quite silly, so it’s not like it’s hard to find things of which to make fun.

But, as Nietzsche said, “He who scoffs at Christmas movie cheesiness should take care that he does not become a cheesy Christmas movie antagonist. And when you hate-watch the Hallmark channel, know that the Hallmark channel also hate-watches you.”

Or something like that. The point is, once you get used to sneering at sincerity, you become immune to it. You can’t appreciate it, even when it is earned.

#3: …But Also Comedy

If you’ve made it this far into this post, you probably can at least tolerate comedy. But some people just aren’t into it. They will see no humor, for instance, in the scene where Pete’s jilted fianceé, working at a Christmas pop-up store to pay for her canceled wedding, tearfully greets customers with a somber, “Welcome to Santa’s Ho-ho-holiday emporium, the happiest place south of the North Pole.” They will not delight in the numerous references to the holiday event that Addie and her friend Drea are planning for a client named Donner as “the Donner party,” before hastily correcting themselves.

Obviously, there are many different kinds of comedy. For Christmas Crush, you’ve got to like wordplay and maybe a dash of light slapstick. If these don’t do it for you, then probably Christmas Crush will fall flat. Actually, probably all of my top favorite Christmas movies (Fitzwilly, Jingle All The Way, and The Lion in Winter) will not work for you. And that’s okay.

#4: No Villain

So many movies feel obliged to give us a villain: the cheating fiancé, the wicked step-mother, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that in most stories, but in the spirit of the Christmas season, isn’t it nice to have a story where no one is motivated by evil intentions? Pete, even at his most obnoxious, is only doing what he is doing because a spell has twisted his inherently good nature. Gina, even when she is rude to Addie, only does so in reaction to understandable hurt feelings.

I don’t mind a good villain. But I also find it refreshing to have a story without one.

#5: Avoiding Clichés and Boring Romance Tropes

We all know how holiday movies rely on clichés. It’s a running joke on Twitter: how many movies are there where the overworked big-city something-or-other is forced to go to a small town for Christmas, where, despite her best efforts, she falls in love with the man of her dreams, who as often as not turns out to be the Prince of Monte Carlo traveling incognito?

Instead of Addie being a workaholic who finds love when she is whisked away to a bucolic setting, she actually likes her job, and finds love with the guy next door. And instead of bonding over something superficial, like, I don’t know, chocolate or something, Addie and Sam discover they actually have mutual interests in philanthropy. That’s something that can be a foundation for a relationship.

#6: Addie Takes Action

Instead of waiting around for the plot to resolve itself in her favor, Addie steps up and takes responsibility. At the end, she says something that is, by the standards of made-for-TV Christmas movies, rather profound:

To everyone in this room, I wish you all the courage to tell the people close to you how you really feel about them. Whether it’s your best friend, your fiancé, or even your next-door neighbor. Even if you’re scared. Even if you’re not sure if they feel the same. Because making a wish, even making a wish for Christmas, it’s not enough. You have to tell them. Because you don’t know what you might be losing if you don’t.

Now, I can’t live this past week over again. But I hope that next time–No. No, I have faith that I won’t make the same mistake again. 

Unlike so many stories of this type–or maybe of many types–Addie grows and learns over the course of the story. She realizes her mistakes, she admits them, and she vows to grow. Maybe you laugh and say that’s a low bar to clear for a story. Maybe it is. But ask yourself this: how many modern Hollywood blockbusters give us this level of character development?

#7: A Beginning, not an Ending

And what I like best of all is that at the end, it’s suggested that Addie and Sam will start dating. Not get engaged, not have a royal wedding, but maybe go out for coffee. I’m not saying whirlwind romances can’t happen, but in general, it makes far more sense for people to fall in love over a period of months or years, not a few days as so often happens in these things.

A real romance is a whole life-time long, and a wedding is just one stop along the way. So many stories treat it as the Final Boss, the last quest before the story ends. Real relationships seldom work in such a cut-and-dried manner, and that is what makes them magical.

Conclusion

Here, my case rests. It may be you are unmoved by all this. Like my friend, you might find Christmas Crush the most awful dreck. And, well, after all, you may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be etc.

If this blog has an agenda–which I am not prepared to admit, but I say only if it does–that agenda is to convey to people that the media that is easy and accessible may not be the greatest art there is. To find great work takes great work.

The flip side of this is that you can find it anywhere, and sometimes in places where the critical consensus least expects it to be. Thus, we find that when our curators of High Culture are debating whether video games are art, some of the greatest stories being told in that form. And when we hear the voices of the taste-makers putting down made-for-TV Christmas movies, we wonder: are the lavish, big-budget productions of the major studios any better?

And of course, there is the humble indie book. We all know, beyond any doubt, that great stories are being told in the pages of little volumes sent out into the world by lone authors, supported by nothing more than their desire to tell them.

My technique when reviewing something is to try and forget, insofar as possible, how and where I found it, and evaluate it on its own terms, independent of who wrote it or whether or not fashionable people sing its praises, and simply ask myself if I like it.

(There is of course a final irony here in that, by publishing my opinion, I am in some measure trying to be one of those people who influences other peoples’ thoughts on the matter. And indeed, there have been times when I have had to ignore myself in order to evaluate something clearly.)

I don’t mind if anyone else’s opinion varies wildly from mine on these things. I am, indisputably, a highly idiosyncratic critic. There is only one key to reviewing anything, be it a Christmas rom-com or a war epic, a Renaissance painting or a video game, a big-name publishing house novel or an indie ebook; and that is to make sure that your opinion is authentically yours, not one that somebody else told you to have. It’s not as easy as it seems, but it’s more rewarding that way.

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In my undergraduate poli sci classes, they told us that Aristotle defined three forms of government: rule by the one, rule by the few, and rule by the many. Of these, each came in good and bad flavors, so the good version of rule by the one is “monarchy” and the bad version is “tyranny.”

As the title suggests, Zachary Shatzer’s latest comic novel concerns itself with the latter, and we are quickly introduced to the land of Kragolia, which is ruled with an iron fist by the Grimheart family.

But within a few pages, the reigning Dictator and his eldest son perish in the course of terrorizing the population, and the role of dictator falls to Trin, the younger son, who is a mild lad with no appetite for cruelty. However, he is quickly urged on to more tyrannical acts by the senior advisor to the dictator, Mysborn.

Ah, Mysborn! One of the most interesting characters in the story, because he is a classic archetype from history. From Michael Psellus to Talleyrand, the figure of the clever, manipulative advisor is a familiar one. For fictional equivalents, see Grima Wormtongue or Sir Humphrey Appleby.  Mysborn is a man who uses deceit and manipulation to get his way.

At first, he thinks he’ll easily have his way with the soft-hearted Trin, but the reluctant dictator refuses to oppress the people. Eventually, he decides to sneak out of the castle, along with his faithful manservant Malcolm, and see the kingdom for himself.

Meanwhile, the people of Kragolia, led by a woman named Gail, are contemplating rebellion against the oppressive regime. But they’re not very optimistic about their chances, since the military might of the Empire seems overwhelming. That is, until a mysterious hero named Eric Strongbow appears, and rallies the resistance with his bravery, not to mention his good looks. He looks like “a conquering hero, but not the kind of conquering hero who had let his victories go to his head. No, his appearance was that of an easygoing sort of conquering hero. The kind you could make a mild joke about without fear that he would be obliged to slice open your torso to restore his sense of honor.”

I have to say it: men, what’s stopping you from looking like this?

As with all his books, Shatzer’s humorous prose sparkles throughout, and I love the style of the narration. It’s a sort of distant third-person tale, with occasional reminders that we are, in fact, being told a story, as the omniscient narrator makes frequent parenthetical asides. This style of storytelling has fallen out of favor lately, and I think it’s high time it made a comeback.

The thing that makes this book great, right up there with Shatzer’s wonderful Beach Wizard, is that it has a real emotional core to it. The scenes with Trin and his mother are perhaps the most poignant, although there are several others. While the book has a jolly tone, Shatzer is never afraid to shy away from moments of true emotion, and that gives it a certain weight that so many humorous stories lack.

For this is more than just a silly comedic adventure. It is also a commentary on government. Dare I say, it’s a kind of mirror for princes, meant to instruct on the virtues that make a hero and warn against the vices that make a tyrant. The contrast between the cruelty of Mysborn and the Grimheart regime vs. the heroism of Eric Strongbow is the distillation of the difference between Aristotle’s good and bad forms of government.

This is a wonderful story. On Twitter, I said it was “like if P.G. Wodehouse wrote fantasy,” and I’m hard-pressed to think of higher praise. Shatzer is a national treasure. (Admittedly, I don’t know what nation he resides in, but whichever one it is, he’s a treasure of it.) And I wish like anything I could persuade more people to read his books.

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Don’t ya just love good old-fashioned pulp adventure stories? You know, the kind where there’s a fearless adventurer on a quest for some long-lost treasure, joined by loyal companions, as well as maybe some not-so-loyal companions, and plenty of exciting battles, ancient puzzles, and terrifying monsters.

Well, this is the book for you. Look at that cover; isn’t that just everything you want in an adventure book? Drew Struzan couldn’t have done it better.

The protagonist of the story is Merona Grant, the daring mercenary treasure-hunter and her faithful dog Argos. When she finds herself down on her luck after being double-crossed, a wealthy aristocrat offers Grant a job to lead her on a hunt for an ancient treasure. Grant accepts, on the condition that her friend, the burly Russian pilot, Sasha Durov, joins them as well.

Together, along with the beautiful Carlotta and the timid Dr. Watt, the group sets out in search of adventure.

What follows is a tale of derring-do in the vein of The Mummy (the 1999 one) or Indiana Jones. Of course, those films were themselves homages to an earlier era of adventure fiction. Indeed, Merona’s mercurial personality reminds me more of Charlton Heston’s character Harry Steele in Secret of the Incas than of Dr. Jones. Kudos to Williamson for creating a new character and setting for a new generation of adventure lovers.

I’d been wanting to read a good treasure-hunting book ever since I finished Peter Martuneac’s latest tale, and this one proved to be just the ticket. If you liked any of the stories I referenced above, check this one out.

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Yes, you read that right.

I promise not to turn this into an all-Napoleon, all-the-time blog, but it just so happened that while looking something up as I was writing my review of the Ridley Scott film, I stumbled across the fact that the old Emperor of the French had written this short romance story in his youth.

The book was unpublished during Napoleon’s lifetime, and had to be gradually pieced together by scholars and collectors. That’s right; before he was renowned as a military genius, before he was Emperor of most of Europe, before he was regarded as either one of the most brilliant leaders or most ruthless tyrants ever to appear on the stage of History, Napoleon Bonaparte was, like so many of us, an indie author. Reader, how could I not review it?

The book tells the story of Clisson, a brave and accomplished young French officer, who has won great honors for his military victories, but who is unfairly slandered by enemies jealous of his success.

Um… okay, so there might be just a tiny bit of Mary Sue-ism here. Clisson is a thinly-veiled version of Napoleon himself. And Eugénie, the woman with whom he falls in love, is a thinly-veiled version of Désirée Eugénie Clary, a woman to whom he was engaged.

The story has the feel of a young man’s work. It’s big on passion and romance and adventure, and a bit short on realism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; that’s very much as it should be.

A modern critic would no doubt rebuke Bonaparte for his reliance on telling instead of showing. But, this is just how people wrote back then, and plenty of classic works of literature do this all the time. So, maybe we can just ignore the modern critics on this point.

Still, there’s no question that drawing deep and multi-faceted characters is not Bonaparte’s strong suit. Clisson and Eugénie’s relationship feels not unlike one you might find in a YA novel. On the plus side, there are no sparkling vampires.

The story ends on a tragic note, which I wasn’t expecting. Napoleon always seems like a fellow who thought he could get out of any trouble, however dire. So the way he has Clisson’s story end up was surprising to me. (Then again, a tragic ending is in line with the original Mary Sue story.)

Overall, my reaction to the story was pretty indifferent. Not horrible, but also definitely not something anyone would find noteworthy, except for the fact it was written by Napoleon. But that in itself is pretty noteworthy! And so the next time you find yourself reading some unremarkable tale by an unknown author, just remember… you might be reading the work of one of the great icons of our age.